


Distinction and Ruin

by hoc_voluerunt



Category: The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bisexual Female Character, Bisexual Male Character, F/F, Female Homosexuality, Female Protagonist, Gen, Gender or Sex Swap, Genderbending, Genderswap, M/M, Male-Female Friendship, Multi, Revenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-07
Updated: 2016-08-07
Packaged: 2018-07-29 22:01:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7701376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hoc_voluerunt/pseuds/hoc_voluerunt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There was very little which could induce Harriet to any enterprise requiring energy and courage; but there was also very little that she would not do for Basil Hallward.</p><p>(AU in which Lord Henry is Lady Harriet, and she finds out what happened to Basil. Based on my own stage adaptation of the text. Also known as the "get rekt dorian" fic.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Distinction and Ruin

            Lady Harriet Wotton – unusually, for her – gave a very genuine sigh. Across the little room, Arabella Fitzgerald raised her eyebrows.

            “Something the matter?” she said, pinning her hair into place over her bare shoulders. Harriet hummed wordlessly, long arms slung artfully above her head and across the mattress where she lay.

            “I do hope Mary takes advantage of her situation,” she eventually said, “and invites over some gentleman caller or other. Or lady caller. Anyone, really, it doesn’t matter. I just hate to see a big empty house like that go unappreciated.”

            “You and I could always sleep there,” Bella replied. “It would certainly be more comfortable than squashing us both in here.”

            “Your house is lovely, Bella,” Harriet smiled, thin and barely half-serious. “It’s – _quaint.”_

            “It’s tiny,” was the dry response. “You don’t need to pretend that you like it.”

            “Ah, but the company is so very excellent…”

            Harriet grinned at her own joke, prompting a sly, almost exasperated expression from Arabella, who merely turned away from the bed and continued to dress. On the bed, Harriet stretched luxuriously, pushing her toes out from under the covers where she could curl them in full view.

            “Perhaps I should visit Dorian,” she eventually mumbled. “If I can’t see that lovely portrait of him, I suppose the real thing will have to suffice.”

            “You’re insufferable,” Bella said to the mirror, smiling. “I only hope Hallward finishes that picture of his and comes back from Paris before you get bored enough to do something disastrous.”

            “I don’t do disastrous things,” Harriet drawled as she rolled herself up to sit at the edge of the bed, sheets falling in delicate curves around her naked waist. “Only interesting ones.”

            Arabella rolled her eyes. “God forbid Basil be inclined to detail in this one.”

           

            Two hours later, Harriet rapped gloved knuckles against the wood of Dorian Gray’s front door. There was something charming about the fact that he didn’t have a bell. At first it had been old-fashioned, a lapse in the modernisation of his old family home. Now, it was a challenge: how to remain poised when knocking loud enough for the old, handsome valet to hear you.

            Harriet Wotton was perhaps the only person in London to consistently overcome that challenge.

            There was a long pause before the door was opened, but Harriet could be patient, when the situation required it. She supposed that it was rather early, in the grand scheme of their lives, to be calling, but she could blame that on Arabella. Anyone romantically engaged to a woman who left the house at eight o’clock in sensible shoes and a frankly gorgeous dress, with a violin case in one hand, was bound to be early to her next appointment, pre-arranged or otherwise. But there was no need to seem pathetic by knocking twice in quick succession, and it was so delicious to feel the stares of the other well-to-dos on Dorian’s street eyeing her back on his front step as they passed.

            Then the door was pulled open with a swift creak and rattle, and Francis smiled out at her, just as polite and comfortable as ever.

            “Good morning, Lady Wotton,” he said. “Is Mr Gray expecting you?”

            “I should certainly hope not,” Harriet quipped back, already stepping up into the house and past the obliging valet. “Do tell him I’ve arrived, he simply must entertain me, or I shall expire from _ennui.”_

            The politely discerning look Francis gave her as he bowed might have given Basil a run for his money; although Basil, Harriet mused, would have been far more forthright in his criticism. Harriet smiled as the valet walked away, and disappeared, straight-backed, through a door at the back of the front hall. Toying idly with her wedding ring, she breathed once – _not_ a sigh – and let her eye fall upon the spindle-legged side table to her right. A corner of her mouth tilted up.

            The crystal vase filled with purple blossoms didn’t smell strongly of anything, though Harriet could tell that the flowers were fresh. A little silver dish beside it had accumulated calling cards; a moment of light-fingered flicking through them told Harriet that in the last day or two, Dorian had been called on by a few young ladies of her acquaintance; that Lady Brandon was still pestering him about charity concerts; that a Mr Burke had telegrammed about something in code; and that Adrian Singleton had finally stopped calling. It was a shame, but that was the way of the world, really. The man would live.

            The left-hand drawer revealed to her the banalities of a social life: a stack of Dorian’s plain white calling cards, pens, pencils, two sheaves of paper in different sizes, blank telegrams, a pair of scissors, and a little ball of twine. The wood was smooth and quiet as Harriet opened and shut the drawers, disturbing nothing in so large a house any more than the faint rattle of carriages from the street.

            In the second drawer was a silver letter opener, and a bundle of keys, and a handkerchief stained with splotches of reddish-brown.

            It wasn’t that the world stopped. Harriet kept breathing, and the cabs outside kept clattering past, and the house – old, opulent, and muffled – kept on being occupied, with Francis and Dorian and Harriet Wotton at least. But the heartbeat in Harriet’s chest also seemed to echo in her ears in a way it had rarely done in her life, and there was something tight and sudden in her gut. She had felt that tightness when she first met Bella; when she first had sex she’d enjoyed; with every other painting Basil showed her; when Gwendolen stopped replying to her telegrams. Here, she felt it’s squeeze with the same, terrifying clarity with which she recognised the stained square of white before her. She knew what paint looked like on these handkerchiefs, even knew what blood looked like on them when a pallet knife had been used a little too carelessly and artist’s hands had knotted the nearest clean cloth tight around the cut. But dried paint did not clot and crack under her gloved hands like this, was never quite so consistent in its colouring; and dried blood from pallet knife wounds was localised, not smeared and blotted like this, warping the shape of the soft square of cotton. And Basil was often distracted, but rarely careless, and carried an unusual caution around artistry: he would never in his life had let something stain the pretty blue monograph Harriet had insisted he buy.

            Distantly, Harriet heard a door snapping shut. With calm shoulders and steady hands, she folded the handkerchief and tucked it away under the waist of her skirt, invisible beneath the layers of her bodice. She shut the drawer and picked up a calling card from the tray, keeping herself perfectly situated with one hip opened up to the room and one eyebrow ready to be cocked in question.

            Francis was all composure when he re-entered the front hallway, and Harriet allowed a little extra amusement to creep into her face.

            “Would it be too optimistic to beg of you the first name of this mysterious Mr Burke?” she said, teasing with the ease of long familiarity. Though Francis didn’t outright smile at her, she could see that he recognised the game they were playing.

            “I’m afraid you would have to ask Mr Gray yourself, Lady Wotton,” he said, with a slight bow, “I can’t say that I’m privy to such information.”

            “No,” Harriet replied, “you can’t say, can you?” She grinned, and turned on her heel, as she dropped the card back onto the tray without care. “Well? Shall I assume he won’t be down for some hours?”

            “Mr Gray is otherwise preoccupied at the moment,” Francis said smoothly, and Harriet laughed.

            “Yes, I’m sure he is…”

            Francis said nothing. After a moment of genial staring, Harriet tilted her head.

            “I suppose it isn’t worth waiting for him,” she said.

            “I shouldn’t think so,” Francis concurred, “not this morning.”

            “More’s the pity,” Harriet shrugged. “In that case, might I borrow a telegram form off you, Francis? It seems I’ll have to bring the rest of my engagements forward, today.”

            “Of course, madam,” Francis bowed, and crossed to join her at the table, sliding open the first drawer and slipping out the first telegram from the pile, along with a stubby pencil. Harriet took the paper, folding it in half.

            “No pencil, please,” she said, “I have one in my carriage. And besides, I know how Dorian reveres all his possessions.”

            She watched as Francis suppressed a smile at that, but all he said was, “Very good, madam. Will that be all?”

            “I suppose it must be,” Harriet replied, and turned back to the door with Francis behind her. “Tell Mr Gray I’m terribly disappointed in him, and should like to hear every detail of this latest of his adventures at the closest opportunity.”

            Francis opened the door.

            “Very good, madam.”

 

            It was not difficult, with a pencil and the right light, to make out the remnants of the impression of Dorian’s elegant letters on the telegram. Silently, Harriet thanked heaven for penny dreadfuls and _Strand Magazine_ s. She didn’t have to consult anything to recognise the address of Alan Campbell’s rooms, and she didn’t need to think hard to realise Dorian’s aim.

            _'_ _Come immediately stop Matter of life and death stop'_

            With imperious fickleness, Harriet rapped at the ceiling of her carriage, and drew down the window as it slowed to a halt in the street, sticking her head out with careful grace, in deference to her hair.

            “Something the matter, ma’am?” she heard the driver say from ahead.

            “Yes,” she called back, “a change of course, James – University of London.”

            “University?” Jim replied, with clear surprise, but he had been in Lady Wotton’s service for long enough not to question her whims, even if such sudden ones were few and far between. “Very well, ma’am.”

            Within moments, then, Harriet had drawn her back into the carriage and pulled the window back into place, and the wheels grinded back into their rattling pace. Harnesses rang out like tuneless bells, and Lady Harriet crossed one leg over the other, settled in her layers of cotton and silk, and let the fingers of one hand toy at the waist of her skirt. The lump of Basil’s handkerchief was not obvious but to those who it to be there, and Harriet Wotton was – for the clearest moment in her life – starkly aware of it.

 

            At the University, a young man informed her that Mr Campbell had left in the morning, and given no indication of when he would return. She left a message to be spread about that she had come to call on Mr Campbell, and waited outside the office of the dean for an hour before boredom finally overtook her. With languid steps, she passed through the halls, classrooms, laboratories, and mortuaries in an attempt to trace Alan’s steps, but there was not a sign of him. No one at the university had seen him since he left – in a huff, one assistant added, impatient, a little miserable – and once Miss Hawthorne had been tracked down at the chemist’s where she worked, she had nothing useful to tell Harriet, except that when she’d last seen Mr Campbell a week earlier, he’d pressed her hand and begged her to either leave Dorian Gray’s company, or leave off talking about him.

            A sentiment with which even a woman of Lady Harriet’s disposition could sympathise.

            _Right,_ she thought to herself – _a frontal assault, then._

            Alan’s landlady, when she finally arrived late in the afternoon, eyed her with some suspicion, but was deferent enough to wealth and status that she still let Harriet into Alan’s rooms without argument. She asked how long Harriet would be staying, and received only a flippant, “However long I need,” in response, which seemed in part to prompt the notably loud footsteps she made as she descended back to her own rooms. Harriet waited as the sunlight dwindled, and the street lamps were lit, and Alan Campbell still remained absent. She waited until long after a fire would have been advisable, eventually sauntering around to turn on a few lights in the cramped sitting room.

            At a few minutes past six o’clock, a key slipped and clicked in the lock, and a pair of black oxfords stopped in the doorway. Harriet – sitting in a chair with her back to the door – smiled to herself.

            “Mr Campbell,” she drawled. “It’s been some time.”

            Timed with care, she tilted her chin over her shoulder, and watched what was left of the blood in Alan’s face drain away. He was trembling very slightly, and though it was not overt, he was in a terrible state, with the pin gone from his cravat, his collar open, and something weak about his knees. There was a heavy, sturdy bag in one of his hands, while the other lay frozen and listless on the doorknob.

            “Lady W—” he began, but his voice seemed to fail him. Harriet felt her expression slip, and she let it, flattening out her voice into matching solemnity.

            “So you did it, then,” she said, and watched as Alan’s chest moved a little faster with his breath.

            “I don’t know what you’re –”

            “Don’t, Alan,” Harriet spoke over him, standing and facing him with more forthright honesty than she could ever remember showing the poor little scientist with pretentions of class. “Just tell me how he died.”

            Campbell’s breath stuttered over the consonants of his next words.

            “H— How w-who died?” he said, but without looking, he also closed the door behind him, and slid the bolt into place. Harriet faced him with impunity.

            “How did Dorian kill Basil?”

            It was almost funny. Alan had a face that was made for smiling, and for peering askance with smirking intent from beneath his eyelashes. It was not suited for despair; the expression sat all wrong on his youthful features, almost insufficient for the purposes, and even then, Harriet mused that his fair good looks would have been so suited to her project had he only been a little richer. In any case – here, now – his eyes were wide and wet, and his mouth a thin and fragile line of fear and regret, and it spoke to his intelligence that he knew when not to prevaricate.

            “He stabbed him,” he said, through shaking syllables. “In the neck. With –” His voice broke off, as if without permission, but he swallowed through it and tried again. “With a letter opener.”

            Harriet’s jaw felt tight.

            “A letter opener?” she repeated, toneless. Alan’s breath sounded almost like a sob.

            “I have a feeling it was – what he had at hand,” he eventually answered, and Harriet was sure someone had reached into her chest, for no emotion could ever have squeezed her heart so painfully. She forced herself to nod.

            “I see,” she said. And when silence fell and there seemed nothing else to say, she simply echoed herself: “I see.”

            In one low, smooth movement, Alan dropped his bag with the tinkling of glass at his side and swooped into the room, joining Harriet at the cold hearth.

            “Please, Harriet,” he said, all restraint gone, “you must understand, I had no choice –”

            She held up one delicate, gloved finger, and the words stopped.

            “He blackmailed you,” she said, “obviously. You’re a better man than that, I know.”

            But Alan was shaking his head.

            “No, Harriet,” he muttered, “I did a terrible thing. I have done terrible things.” His voice cracked again, and came out next as a whisper. “And he will tell everyone – _everyone…”_

            “What will he tell them?” Harriet shrugged. “That you had a few affairs on the side? That hardly matters.”

            Alan’s eyes were wide with horror as he looked up at her, his mouth open in anger.

            “Harriet – they’ll _convict_ me, how can you talk like this?”

            She merely shrugged again, drawing up her arms so she could inspect her rings and gloved finger-ends.

            “Convict you of what?” she said. “Sodomy? Good God, no, I can list a dozen women from the top of my head who’d swear up and down no invert could make love to them like that. They would _know,_ surely. And a merely extramarital habit may be distasteful, but it’s no crime. That Gray fellow, on the other hand… Well. I’m not so sure about him.”

            It was only in his brows that Alan’s expression had changed, creasing down in the middle.

            “You’re,” he said, slowly – “defending me?”

            Harriet was so shocked by his ingenuous tone that she met his eye, and held it steadily. She took a breath, almost distantly curious at the honesty she could feel about to escape her mouth.

            “Listen to me when I tell you, Campbell, that you are, largely speaking, insignificant. It’s all well and good to be interesting, but there’s a fine line between boredom and danger, and only people with a few particular qualities are worth walking it. You’re dangerous, Alan. That’s all there is to it. It isn’t your fault, of course it isn’t, but these things so rarely are our own faults. I take no responsibility for your life, or its demise.

            “But Basil Hallward – is my responsibility. Mr Gray has done undoubtedly awful things, but he’s at least always managed to do them with grace. _This_ – is not graceful. None of it is. Not his death, not your help, and not Gray’s hypocrisy in his treatment of you. So since you are useful to me, Mr Campbell, I have an offer for you.”

            “Anything,” he said, without hesitation. Harriet smiled very slightly.

            “Come have dinner with me.”

 

            They had dinner, somewhere public, alongside a wealthy, highly fashionable couple of Harriet’s acquaintance, and one of the beautiful, unmarried young women from their extensive family tree. Alan carried himself remarkably well: though his hands sometimes shook, he laughed and made conversation as he had used to, heeding Harriet’s glances and following her example towards levity. When she returned home that night, Victor was still up, with his hair in a mess around his thin, handsome face, sitting in one of the parlours with a book and a pot of tea.

            “Alan Campbell?” he said in greeting, hardly looking up from his book except to follow her with his watery eyes.

            “Yes, he’s picked up the piano in the last few months,” Harriet replied, stripping out of her hat, gloves, and wrap, and pouring herself a cup of tea from Victor’s tray. “I thought I might investigate on your behalf.”

            “Is he any good?” Victor asked, lowering his book, and Harriet only laughed.

            “Oh my dear Victor,” she sighed, toeing out of her boots, “what would I do for entertainment without you here?”

            He looked as if he were thinking something along the lines of _‘Miss Fitzgerald,’_ but refrained from answering.

            “Are you coming to bed tonight?” Harriet asked, as she sipped her tea on her way out of the room.

            “Probably,” he responded, quiet and forlorn, as if resigned to his fate.

 

            Not much could be said for Victor Wotton; but he did make an excellent hot water bottle.

 

* * *

 

            The questions came, as they always inevitably did. Over the next week, Harriet fielded inquiries from Lady Brandon and her friends at dinner, and a curious Lord Cawdor at a concert. They were easily distracted: Harriet would simply say that she was interested in chemistry, and her audience would dismiss her as frivolous, or lascivious, or sometimes both; or she would say that, with the amount of company Alan was wont to keep, it was no wonder he had sought out a little solitude for a few months, and her company would laugh or look shocked, depending on how well they knew the man.

            On the Saturday evening, Harriet picked Alan up in her carriage with a new suit – with matching shirt studs, tie pin, cufflinks, tie, and all – and dragged him along to a crush at Mr Benjamin Albury’s long, if narrow, house in town. It wasn’t until they were halfway there that she clicked her tongue and said, “Oh, and Dorian Gray will be there,” just to watch Alan’s expression turn to stone.

            “Never you mind, Campbell, I’ll keep him well away from you,” she said. “We can’t have either of you causing a scene, not tonight. I don’t want to be distracted from Albury’s furniture – did you know he gets it all made especially for his house? Pays all sorts of money, Miss Swift was telling me just last week about how it’s all made from wood from a particular copse of trees on his family estate. Waste of good foliage, if you ask me, but he does have unfortunately good taste…”

            And that was that. They were welcomed into Albury’s house and ushered towards the sound of violins and champagne glasses, and although the man with the tray who handed them each a delicate, crystal flute eyed Alan with something bordering on both confusion and suspicion, the young man responded admirably with a forthright gaze and an audible, “You know, a photograph would mean you could stare all you like. I have a studio at my rooms, in fact, perhaps you’d like to come around sometime?”

            At which the waiter blushed and hurried away. Harriet glided through the room with Alan at her elbow – and occasionally on it – and it was ludicrously easy to follow the paths she knew, in and out of conversations, flirtations, and philosophical airs. Everyone recognised her, and many recognised Alan, and no one dared speak a word against them while both were there. And the words Harriet overheard against them when the speakers assumed otherwise were always more curious than caustic. After finally managing to greet the host, Harriet left Alan in a brilliant seduction of the daughter of one of Albury’s fellow carpentry enthusiasts, and made her way from group to group until she could slip up the stairs to the next level of revelry. She kissed the hand of an unfamiliar young man who greeted her with breathless familiarity, and the neck of a woman older than herself who was bemoaning the few uses of men. This took her into the library, where she was able to loudly disclaim against worrying about infidelity in front of a couple both lying to each other about their affairs, and to prove to Mrs Scott that Albury’s books were all unread and mostly fake, apart from his collected Dickens.

            Then Harriet was finally close enough to pull apart the heavy velvet curtain of a window seat, and interrupt Dorian Gray with his mouth on the younger Miss Albury’s neck, and his hand under her skirts.

            “Dorian,” Harriet said, with an indulgent smile. “And good evening, Miss Albury. No, please, don’t get up.”

            The young woman was flustered enough to obey, tremblingly attempting to readjust her bodice and sleeves while Dorian laughed, and stood in one, smooth movement.

            “Lady Harriet,” he said, holding out a hand for hers, “I’m so sorry I couldn’t see you earlier this week, you shouldn’t have run off so quickly!”

            Harriet raised an eyebrow at his outstretched hand and declined to meet it with her own. “As much as I enjoy your furnishings, Dorian,” she said, “I’d rather enjoy them when you’re around as embellishment, you suit them so perfectly.”

            Dorian laughed again, eyes bright with extravagance and not a little bit of drink.

            “I should have told Francis to ask you to return in the afternoon when I was a little more awake,” he said. “Still. We’re here now, aren’t we?”

            “Yes we are,” Harriet drawled. “Would you like say hello to Alan, while he’s around?”

            “Alan?” Dorian repeated, and if Harriet hadn’t been looking for it, she might have missed the way his expression shuttered and sharpened for just a moment. “Not Alan _Campbell,_ surely?”

            “Apparently he’s developed an interested in Mr Albury’s carpentry,” Harriet said, all feigned innocence. “Or perhaps it’s his daughter, I can never remember which is more important. Or was it his nephew?”

            “Alan Campbell is _here?”_ Dorian insisted, and moved out into the library a step, towards Harriet. The movement left just enough room for Miss Albury to make her escape, but neither of them took notice of it. Dorian’s expression screwed up into mocking incredulity. _“Why?”_

            “I brought him as a guest,” Harriet said, with a sideways nod. “I’ve been a little bored lately, I thought his brand of humour might be a welcome change, since no one else in society seems inclined to laugh at anything. And besides, he is so good at bringing marriages together. Or breaking them, but really, in the end, it’s always for the best.”

            “I almost can’t believe it,” Dorian said, frowning over a sparkling expression as he took Harriet’s arm and led her out of the library. “Alan Campbell. I thought you had better taste than that.”

            “Don’t impugn my taste, Dorian, it chose you, after all,” Harriet shot back. “In any case: what good are tastes if they don’t change? Life would be horribly dull if we still loved the things we adored at seventeen.”

            It wasn’t that the thought hadn’t occurred to her – it had been at the back of her mind all day – but with Dorian’s hands at the crook of her elbow, the notion was unavoidably intimate: these were the hands that had killed Basil. They were soft and clean, and as elegant as always, framed by the shining white glimpse of his shirt cuffs under his exquisite jacket, but all Harriet could see as she clasped them was blood. She wondered, what had driven this beautiful man to kill Basil? Basil Hallward, who had never hurt another person in his life, even less so wilfully, and who, though he revered Dorian beyond everything, knew very well when not to pursue such passions?

            He would never paint again, and these hands were responsible. Harriet trailed the pads of her fingers across Dorian’s knuckles, and smiled to herself, indulgent and secret and blatant, like all her other smiles.

            “I’m not sure Alan would want to see me, in any case,” Dorian mused, almost to himself, as they stalked across the hall to the stairs. “He took it all horribly seriously, the poor man, it was very awkward.”

            “And there’s nothing like a little awkwardness to make one forge ahead indiscriminately,” Harriet replied, and led the way down the stairs. As they reached the bottom, she pinched the arm of a passing waiter – the same one who had handed her a glass when she entered – and he startled and turned to her. “You there,” she said, smoothing out his sleeve, “where’s the man I came in with earlier? You know the one.”  
            “I – I’m not certain, madam –” the man started, but Harriet waved it away.

            “Yes you are, come along now,” she said, “I’m only sometimes a patient woman.”

            She smiled, and held his gaze, just to reinforce in his mind what she was talking about. His eyes darted charmingly to avoid hers.

            “I’m – sure I last saw him in the sitting room, madam,” he said. “Good evening.”

            As he darted away, Harriet watched Dorian watch his backside in retreat. She let him enjoy the moment very briefly, before snapping, “Come on then,” and dragging him aside through the crowd – no longer gliding – and towards the sitting room off the main parlour.

            They found Alan deep in conversation with the newly-titled Lady Highsmith on a sofa, legs crossed and all facing towards her, except for one hand, reserved for the knee of Lord Highsmith in an armchair opposite them. Harriet squeezed Dorian’s arm by hers.

            “Or perhaps we shouldn’t disturb him,” she murmured in his ear. For just a second, she allowed herself to enjoy the dark, wide-eyed expression of shock on Dorian’s face, mixed with the smallest amount of what looked like paranoia in his taut lips; then she kissed his cheek, and untwined their arms, and stepped away to cross the room, pluck a new glass of champagne from a passing tray, and slip carelessly into conversation with Lucy Cawdor’s cousin.

            Harriet didn’t speak to Dorian again that night. In the end, she left the party fashionably early, alongside an Alan Campbell who had just very gracefully denied an invitation to accompany the Highsmiths home.

            “You see, Mr Campbell?” she said in her carriage, as it rattled its way towards the cheaper end of the city. “Now that he’s seen you out and about, it will not be so easy to prosecute you. He’ll be thinking twice from now on, and that will give us the delay we need. Easiest thing in the world.”

            “For you,” he muttered, not looking at her, but out at the passing streets, flashing away from him. Harriet granted him a shrug from across the dim interior.

            “I won’t deny it,” she said. “But rank and wealth will always either bring or receive ruin, so I may as well enjoy it while I can.”

            “And bring ruin where you may?” Alan shot back, with a momentary, sidelong glance at her. She tried to smile at that, but it soured all too quickly.

            “I told you, Alan,” she said, forcing lightness into her voice. “I will permit that boy his transgressions. I permitted him his dismissal of you, after all. I permitted what he did to Singleton, I even permitted what he did to Gwendolen. They were the unavoidable tragedies of this life of ours, we have always known that they lurk right around the corner. I mourn for my sister’s disgrace, but I cannot let resentment for Dorian’s actions cloud every instance of my life, or where would it lead? Boredom. Misery. There is little to enjoy in this life, but I intend to enjoy every bit of it that I can. But Basil was not a part of this life. Basil Hallward was the best man that I have ever known. Dull as a brick, and shining because of it. I have, for many years, avoided using destruction as a source of personal entertainment, but believe me, Mr Campbell, I shall very much enjoy destroying Dorian Gray.”

            Alan remained silent as she finished her speech. Her voice had begun to waver very slightly by the end, but she pursed her lips, and swallowed, and pushed herself through it. Usually, she talked for the fun of it, but these words were not just for pleasure, but necessity. They were imperative, their being spoken was imperative, and it was only here, in the privacy of her own carriage with the one confidante she was able to have in her endeavour, that they could be spoken.

            Alan dropped his eyes to the floor of the carriage between his shining shoes.

 

* * *

 

            The days went past, and there was no whisper of arrest, or trial, or even scandal, around Alan Campbell. Harriet approached a lawyer in secret, and showed him the handkerchief, and told him of Alan’s knowledge, and determined how quickly a conviction could be possibly achieved, at the same time as the first article appeared in the personal pages of a newspaper, asking for anyone with knowledge of how to contact Mr Basil Hallward to please come forward.

            Harriet had very little in the way of self-restraint, but it did not take much more than the thought of Dorian Gray’s bloody fingers to keep her from sending a response.

            Perhaps the worst thing was that it was so very easy. Harriet chatted amiably with beautiful young women of Alan’s acquaintance, and knew how easy his defence would be should she need it. She whispered horrible things about Dorian Gray to royal guards, and stevedores, and minor barons, and knew how very simple it would be to crumble Gray’s testimony before it ever was built. She had always absently thought that, for Basil alone, she would tear down the walls of the city by hand and raze the whole damned thing to ashes; it was almost disappointing, then, to know that the best she could do for Basil was to have a few well-timed conversations with well-chosen people.

            But it was Alan that was the key. Without him, there was only a bloody handkerchief – no doubt Gray had already gotten rid of everything else that he could – but his witness could prove a body, and condemn a man for putting it there. But Harriet had known enough lonely women and agonised men to recognise despair when she saw it. The night she marched into Alan’s rooms to find him locking a pistol away in a desk drawer was only the final piece of a quite simple puzzle.

            “Give that to me,” she sighed that night, holding out an exquisite hand, “we have an opera to attend.”

            But Alan squared his shoulders, and wrapped his fist around the key, and said: “No.”

            Harriet scoffed. “Melodrama doesn’t suit you, Campbell,” she said, striding slowly across the room, “you’re far better fitted to the concert hall than the theatre. Hand it over, don’t buy another one, or any other method, and let’s be done with the absurd matter.”

            “This isn’t _melodrama,_ Lady Harriet,” Alan spat at her, standing his ground. “It’s not _absurd._ This is my life. I knew that man, I met him, I tried to bed him and laughed when he got flustered – and I cut him into pieces. I cut him up. I burned him away with every method I knew, just to save my own skin.”

            “He was already dead, Alan,” Harriet replied, with a roll of her eyes, “you have very little to feel sorry for.”

            “What if he sends that letter?” Alan threw back at her, finally stepping away in the face of her advance. “What if my mother finds out, what if everyone knows? I can’t go to prison, Harriet, I can’t, I’ll never survive.”

            Harriet could feel herself growing tenser. “You won’t go to prison,” she said, “I’m making very sure of that –”

            “No,” Alan said over her, shaking his head, “no I won’t, because I will kill myself first. Whether the fear or the guilt does it, I will shoot myself before it ever comes to that.”

            It was, unexpectedly, the final straw. Harriet’s expression hardened, and in two steps, she was in front of Alan and gripping his stronger hand in her own with fingers like a vice, wrapping one way or another around the key in his hand. Her voice, when it came out, was low and poisonous.

            “You will not shoot yourself,” she said, “because then Dorian Gray will not hang for his crime. And I _will_ see him hang. If you feel you must – if you _really_ feel that you must, and I would understand, Alan, really I would – but if you honestly feel that way, you will postpone it. You will testify, and the jury will feel so very sorry for you, to have suffered under the threats of a depraved young gentleman, and you will not go to prison, and you will not be punished – but Dorian Gray _will hang._ If it is the last thing I ever see, I will see that.”

            Under her hand, Alan’s fist began to loosen, but even that triumph could not quench the rage which squeezed behind Harriet’s ribs and made even the distinguished, languid, famously careless Lady Wotton growl at an old friend.

 _My God, Basil,_ she thought to herself, _would you not be proud to see me now._

            “Give me the key, Alan,” she said instead, with all the imperiousness of wealth and bearing with which she had been instilled since birth – and he did. The fingers under hers went slack, and she snatched up the key, unlocked the drawer behind her, and drew out the heavy little pistol. She regarded its shape with some curiosity, then held it out, handle-first, towards Alan.

            “We can stop at a pawn shop on the way,” she said, with her accustomed lightness, edged with distaste at the very idea of second-hand goods. “Now put on a better cravat, will you? It isn’t ‘96 anymore.”

 

* * *

 

            Oh, but it was all so very easy.

 

* * *

 

            Harriet held a crush at her house two weeks after the incident at Albury’s. She invited all the usual suspects, and approved Victor’s little guest list, to ensure that the brightest names and best fashions would be in attendance, along with Alan, Bella, and Lucy, who was always a good source of news. There was an exclusive dinner beforehand – meticulously planned – followed by the usual drinking, talking, dancing, flirting hours.

            She very specifically did not invite Dorian Gray.

            When he inevitably arrived, then – with his coat in a maid’s hand and his top hat loose in his own fingers – Harriet was standing in close conversation across the parlour with Victor at one hand, Lady Thornbury at the other, and a gaggle of Lord Somersby’s young cousins in attendance. She had never been such a picture of respectability, smiling vague words of philosophy and intrigue to shocked young lords and ladies who would giggle about such scandalous things later on. There was a silence which leaked through the room at Dorian’s entrance, starting from the surprise of those nearest him and spreading at odd angles through the curiosity of others, until Lady Thornbury frowned and turned about to investigate the fuss, drawing Harriet’s attention from her little group to the parlour entrance, where Dorian was taking two steps into the room.

            “Mr Gray,” Harriet called across to him, and tailcoats and silk skirts swished out of the way to form a path between them – “I don’t recall sending you an invitation.”

            Dorian stopped and smiled at that, piercing and brilliant.

            “No,” he said, with mocking acquiescence, “but I thought I’d come along nonetheless. There are some faces I wanted to see.”

            The hush had spread to the corners of the room, uninterrupted but by a few, underhanded whispers, and Harriet’s short, quiet laugh.

            “My God,” she said, raking her eyes up and down Dorian’s body as if finding even his impeccable tailoring insufficient. “The boy thinks he’s fashionable.”

            There was a very short moment – half a breath – in which Dorian stared at her with a dying smile on his open mouth and fear in his beautiful eyes; then he laughed, and it was all wiped away.

            “I do, rather,” he said, all extravagance, and reached for the hand of Miss Marsden near him. Before he could catch it, however, Harriet frowned, and cocked her head to one side.

            “Mr Gray,” she said, sly and insistent enough to stop him bending down to kiss Miss Marsden’s fingers. “I am loathe to repeat myself, it’s such a terribly bad habit. Only clerks and milliners ever seem to repeat themselves willingly, which I admit reveals a little too much of the incomes of some of my company, but – why are you here?”

            Dorian laughed again, straightening up and stepping away from the young lady and towards Harriet again.

            “Lady Harriet,” he said, clearly enjoying himself, “it really has been too long. I’ve missed your little talks –”

            “No,” Harriet spoke over him, intentionally inflecting into her voice something of the condescension used with children and pet dogs – “no, Mr Gray. You weren’t invited. Company like this must be earned, not assumed.”

            Dorian did not laugh. Neither did he advance any further into the room.

            “I’m only taking your advice, Lady Harriet,” he said, all innocence, and Harriet suppressed another laugh, turning away and covering her mouth with three delicate fingers for a moment as if to compose herself.

            “Oh my boy,” she said, as she looked back up, “you should know not to believe everything people say to you.”

            “If this company must be earned,” Dorian retorted, quick and sharp, “then I shudder to think what one must to do earn it.”

            Harriet levelled him with a forthright eye. “You?” she said. “Shudder? I shouldn’t think so.”

            In the silence which followed, Harriet knew that Dorian had no response, and no tactics up his sleeve. It was too early for her to crow with victory, but every battle from there, she knew, would be inevitably hers. She allowed a light, half-smile to lift the corner of her mouth, lilting her words and sharpening her edges.

            “Run along home now, Master Gray,” she said. “You may return when you’ve learned your manners.”

            Gray had no other option. With only a dark, furious, curled-lip expression, he turned on his heel and stalked, straight-backed, out of the room, snatching his coat from the maid as he passed. A moment later, the front door could be heard slamming behind him, and every face in the room turned back to Harriet.

 _“Well,”_ she said, turning to catch Lucy’s eye through to crowd. “Isn’t that a relief. Now where’s my sherry?”

            The party went on, as they always did, until Harriet left Alan Campbell asleep on her sofa under one of the Somersby nieces, and fell into one of the spare beds with Bella while Victor took some young pianist up to another. All night, she thrilled with vicious joy, singing in her heartstrings, at Dorian’s parting expression. Basil, of course, had never approved of revenge; but good God, did Harriet find that she enjoyed it.

 

            The next day, Alan wrote a signed and witnessed document of testimony against Mr Dorian Gray, accusing him of the murder and concealment of Mr Basil Hallward. That night, Harriet read that Dorian had been turned away from a crush at Lord Howell’s, and that no one at her favourite club would speak to him. Even the ease of the matter was not enough to dull her joy. Harriet went to bed with Victor that night, so happy that even he commented on her unusual energy. She merely smiled at him then, hair down and in her most comfortable nightdress, and said, “I’ve something to be energetic about.”

 

* * *

 

            Within the week, Dorian Gray had been arrested on suspicion; within the fortnight, his trial began. Harriet played the dutifully mournful woman, closest friend to the deceased, with only a small amount of acting required, and Alan took to the witness box with a dull expression and a tale of unimaginable woe. They didn’t even need to trot out the line of Alan’s female paramours: when Dorian tried to accuse him of anything untoward, he was all but laughed out of the court.

            There was no doubt, however, about which part of the ordeal had given Harriet the most pleasure. Although Dorian’s fruitless pleas were satisfying, it was the moment she had taken the stand, and her lawyer had pulled out Basil’s stained handkerchief, that stood out with the most clarity. She had lifted her veil and taken her oath, and answered all the requisite preliminaries; and then Mr Higgs had drawn out the handkerchief, and Dorian’s eyes went wide, his fine brows rose, and his rosebud mouth became tight and terrified.

            “Can you identify this handkerchief, Lady Harriet?” Mr Higgs had said, and she had sniffed none too subtly, and replied:

            “Yes. It is one belonging to my friend, Mr Hallward. I recognise the monograph in the corner, it’s the same initials with which he signs his paintings, ask anyone who’s been in a gallery.”

            “Let the jury understand that the handkerchief is stained to a great extent with what is certainly blood,” Mr Higgs had gone on, almost off-hand, eliciting a delicate gasp from jury and gallery alike. “And did you find this handkerchief, Lady Harriet?” he added.

            Harriet lifted her wobbling chin.

            “Yes.”

            “Where?”

            “In Dorian Gray’s house. I called on him on the morning of November the seventh, and while looking for a telegram form in a desk in his front hall, found that instead.”

            Across from her, Dorian’s mouth had screwed up with hate, and his eyes blazed with suspicion and fury over smooth cheeks. It had taken all that Harriet had in her to contain a smile. She would have liked to have been able to photograph his response, but as things stood, she would have to cherish only the memory.

 

* * *

 

            “Come now, Alan,” Harriet clucked in Campbell’s sitting room, “we can hardly be late for his sentencing. I know it’s delightful to be gauche every so often, but now is hardly the time.”

            Alan huffed from behind his bedroom door.

            “I can’t bear it, Harriet,” he said, raising his voice through the wood. “I know you look forward to it all, but even after everything – I don’t like to think of his death. I don’t like to think of us having caused it.”

            Harriet scoffed at that, light and merry.

            “I never knew you had it in you!” she cried. “What is all this sentiment doing here, it’s hardly the time and place. You don’t want to think of him hanging?”

            “No, I don’t,” Alan snapped, and the door cracked open to reveal his morose and tense expression. “He’s done terrible things, but I won’t take pleasure in seeing him pay for them.”

            Harriet tipped her head to one side, eyebrows high. “Terrible things?” she repeated. “I should think that to be something of an understatement.”

            “Perhaps,” Alan muttered, not meeting her eye. “But I can’t help that I won’t take enjoyment from this.”

            “Alan,” Harriet sighed, with a hint of pity, “he murdered Basil Hallward. Forget about the rest – forget about Gwendolen, and Adrian, and Lucy, and _you,_ Alan, suppose we forget about the things he did to you – and just remember that. He put a kni— no, even that is too generous. He put a _letter opener_ through _Basil Hallward’s neck._ I’m inclined to kill him myself, but it is so very much neater to let the official authorities do it for me. You may go on in your squeamish ways, though I never would have believed it of you, but I, for one, fully intend to enjoy every second of pain he endures, as well as the sight of him dead at the end of a rope. Is that understood?”

            Alan fixed her with an inscrutable look, and she wondered for a moment what he must have looked like in the face of Dorian’s threats. Had he trembled, then? Cried, and begged? Or had he fixed Gray with one of these looks of his – so far a cry from his habitual innuendo – with still an inkling of pride in his jaw, and the fierceness of life behind his eyes even in resignation to the most awful fate?

            Then he looked away again, and Harriet all but rolled her eyes.

            “And for heaven’s sake, what did I tell you about your ties?” she said. “You really must catch up with the fashion if I’m to allow you to continue in my circle.”

            From beneath his fair brow, Alan tilted up a knowing eye and the barest hint of a smirk.

            “If you don’t like it,” he said, “why don’t you take it off me, then?”

            Harriet did not suppress her smile at that. On easy feet, she stepped across the room and deftly swept away the gold pin, undid the knot, and unwrapped the sombre, brown tie from Alan’s collar.

            “I’m a married woman, Mr Campbell,” she said, in a tone more playful than reproachful, and he almost seemed to laugh at that.

            “Victor will be leaving you within the month,” he retorted. She could not argue the point.

            “Then let’s say that I’m spoken for,” she replied. “Is that better?”

            This time, he really did laugh. Taking the pin and tie from Harriet’s hands, he stepped backwards, without looking, into his bedroom.

            “Help me find something better to wear, would you?” he said. Harriet followed him, with a knowing eye.

            “I can see what you’re doing Mr Campbell,” she said, “and it isn’t going to work. You’re a vital witness, and I _will_ watch him be condemned. Something in satin would do.”

            “Interesting choice,” said Campbell, opening a drawer. “Soft on the skin.”

            “You’re incorrigible,” Harriet offered in return. “Not black. Have you anything in a dark pattern?”

            Alan plucked out something in dark purple, with a faint paisley pattern, at which Harriet narrowed her eyes before approving. When he held out the tie to her, she merely smiled, and accepted it.

            “Entirely incorrigible,” she murmured, slinging it around his neck and deftly tying the knot. “Where’s your silver tie pin, the one with the tear drop end?”

            “On the dresser,” said Alan, making no move to retrieve it. Harriet rolled her eyes, and turned away to pick through the ordered mess on Alan’s dresser in the weak sunlight which filtered between the tall brick buildings and through the grimy window.

            “Bella’s a lucky woman, you know,” Campbell added to her back, almost wistfully.

            “I always knew there was a reason I let you into my circle,” Harriet replied archly. Alan gave a muted scoff.

            “I’m being honest,” he said.

            “Well, while we’re being _honest,”_ Harriet returned, spinning about with the tie pin in hand and reaching for his warm chest and the tie hanging there, “it is I who is the lucky one, not Bella.”

            Alan’s expression was still and searching.

            “Sentiment, Lady Wotton?” he said, very quietly.

            “I’ll deny it till the end of my days,” Harriet answered, matching his tone. She affixed his tie, closing off the sharp end of the pin under the edge of his shirt. When she didn’t move away, Alan caught his fingers on the pin holding her watch at her waist, and leaned up, kissing her lightly. She felt no need to pull away.

            “Thank you,” he whispered against her lip.

            “I’m not doing it for you, Alan,” was her only response.

 

* * *

 

            Dorian Gray was found guilty, and sentenced to hang. Harriet could have cried with joy at the pronouncement. A date was set – a week later – and, in the interim days, Harriet felt nothing but a kind of numb pride. Her happiness faded, and her victory became stale in her mouth.

            Two days before the execution, she visited Dorian in prison. He was dressed in shabby, authority-issued clothes, ill-fitting and unfashionable, and he regarded Harriet with unbridled disgust in his glaring eyes and curled lip in a screwed-up, ugly face. Harriet thought she could detect an element of age in him at last, a harrowing of care and worry that had never burdened his shoulders or hollowed his cheeks in his former life.

            “Dorian,” she said in greeting as he was placed across from her at a little interview table, unable even to choose where and when he stood or sat. Harriet’s smile was stiff and predatory. “I’m very pleased to see you, you know.”

            “Are you?” he bit out, thrusting out his chin at her. “I should have imagined quite the opposite.”

            “I’ll see you swing in two days,” Harriet qualified, almost airy with the knowledge, even if it was a little hollow. “And believe me, Mr Gray, that is a very pleasing thought.”

            “I imagine it is,” he sneered. “You always have been cruel to me.”

            “No I haven’t,” Harriet laughed. “I’ve been barely indifferent to you, Dorian. You have been an entertainment, that’s all. I didn’t care for the pain or pleasure that you caused except for how it distracted me. I was never cruel to you Dorian, because I have never been cruel to anyone. You did all those deeds for me.”

            “I lived how you _told_ me to live.”

            “Untrue, again,” Harriet chuckled. “You crossed that line long ago, Dorian, all of your own accord. Killing Basil was only the final straw.”

            Dorian almost smiled at that, cold and awful, but there was too much that was haggard in his face to make it work. He cocked his head to one side.

            “Well done,” he said, with a cruel glint in his eye, “in your protection of Alan. I’m sure he appreciates being someone’s pet again.”

            Harriet felt her expression harden.

            “How dare you, by the bye,” she said, voice still somehow casual. “Threaten him as you did. Treat him as poorly as you like, but legal prosecution?” She smiled, a minuscule, mirthless shift in her lips. “I’m all for betraying trust, but that seems a step too far, don’t you think?”

            His face was still frozen in its cruel near-smile.

            “It’s gratifying to know I can still surprise you,” he said, all indulgence, as if they were sharing quips over a bottle of wine at the club. Harriet laughed just once at that.

            “One less surprise,” she drawled, “and perhaps your life wouldn’t be forfeit.”

            Dorian had no response to that. He glared at her, smooth and ugly at heart, a deep-seated selfishness at the bottom of it. Harriet had never been intimidated by him before, and she was certainly far from being so now.

            “It irks you, doesn’t it?” she said, mostly out of curiosity, knowing the answer to be yes but still willing to goad him and see what reaction the fascinating, beautiful young man would give. “Not having gotten away with it.”

            Dorian remained silent: merely pursed his lips and scowled. It made Harriet smile.

            “Goodbye, Mr Gray,” she cooed, standing in one, smooth movement and a flood of skirts. “I shan’t be speaking to you again, I imagine.”

            She turned to walk away, towards the prison guard and the door behind her. As she did, however, Dorian shouted after her, half-rising from his seat.

            “Philanderer,” he cried, voice gaining in ferocity, “heartless, invert, _cunt!”_

            Harriet could not have suppressed her smile had she tried, and she certainly didn’t try. She stopped in her tracks, but did not turn, merely tipped her chin over her shoulder to catch his eye.

            “You’ll find, Mr Gray,” she said coolly, “that the court has ruled in _your_ favour on those counts.”

            There was nothing more to say. He would hang in two days, and he had given all that he had, and underwhelmed her. He had murdered Basil – her friend – and here he was, shouting impotent, artless insults at her from his chained wrists and guarded table. He was nothing, he was worse than nothing: where once he had inspired potential and fascination, now he inspired little more than a hollow disdain.

            Harriet left the prison without a backwards glance.

 

            When Dorian Gray was hanged from the neck until dead, it was with the eyes of Harriet Wotton wide and fixed on him, as if striving to burn every second into her memory forever.

 

* * *

 

            “You can cry, you know,” Bella murmured to her, curled up in Harriet’s oversized bed. She had Harriet’s dirty blonde hair piled on her shoulder, where she could stroke her fingers through it almost listlessly. Harriet huffed something like a laugh into her nightdress.

            “I don’t want to cry,” she said, low and bitter. “I don’t want to do anything.”

            “Then you can not do anything,” Bella shrugged, jostling Harriet’s head only minimally. Harriet squirmed at that, and pulled her arm a little tighter around Bella’s waist.

            “He’s gone, Bella,” she whispered. “Really gone.”

            “Which one?”

            It made Harriet smile, so typical and knowing a response. Intelligence masquerading as simplicity. So very Bella. Perhaps that was what had made Basil keep Harriet herself around so long, she mused. She had never really had cause to mourn someone, but in the face of Basil’s black moods and broken hearts, Harriet had always known to treat him just as she always did, with perhaps a few deft, gentle touches. Care masquerading as callousness.

            She briefly buried her face in Bella’s shoulder, screwing her eyes shut where they couldn’t be seen, then resurfacing.

            “Basil,” she gasped. “God, Bella – Basil, my Basil, our –”

            It was too much. She stopped talking all at once. In the interim silence, Bella shifted around so she could curve her other arm around Harriet’s shoulder, neck, and cheek, as if to shield her from a world she had long since learned to endure.

            “We’ll stay in tomorrow,” she said. “Things don’t have to be the same, you know.”

            “I can’t believe that they would be,” Harriet mumbled. “Not with all the energy in the world. There isn’t even a _body –”_

            She cut herself off before she could grow too bitter. Nothing was Alan’s fault, and the murderer was dead; but though the knowledge satisfied her, it couldn’t soothe the ache between her ribs.

            “You will hurt, now,” Bella said, “and one day it shall hurt less. That’s all I can promise you. We are what we are,” she finished in a murmur, “and we will be what we will be.”

            It was as honest a comfort as she could give. And Harriet Wotton – liar, philosopher, wit, and hypocrite – had always admired honesty.


End file.
